“Impossible!” Malchus said incredulously. “The haughty Julia, the fairest of the Roman maidens, fall in love with a slave! You are dreaming, Clotilde.”
“But you are not a common slave, Malchus, you are a Carthaginian noble and the cousin of Hannibal. You are her equal in all respects.”
“Save for this gold collar,” Malchus said, touching the badge of slavery lightly.
“Are you sure you do not love her in return, Malchus? She is very beautiful.”
“Is she?” Malchus said carelessly. “Were she fifty times more beautiful it would make no difference to me, for, as you know as well as I do, I love some one else.”
Clotilde flushed to the brow. “You have never said so,” she said softly.
“What occasion to say so when you know it? You have always known it, ever since the day when we went over the bridge together.”
“But I am no fit mate for you,” she said. “Even when my father was alive and the tribe unbroken, what were we that I should wed a great Carthaginian noble? Now the tribe is broken, I am only a Roman slave.”
“Have you anything else to observe?” Malchus said quietly.
“Yes, a great deal more,” she went on urgently. “How could you present your wife, an ignorant Gaulish girl, to your relatives, the haughty dames of Carthage? They would look down upon me and despise me.”